


soften every edge

by natromanoffs



Category: New Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natromanoffs/pseuds/natromanoffs
Summary: takes place after 1x05.Cece's spent the night in bed with Schmidt, and it starts to make her reconsider how she thinks about him.
Relationships: Cece Parekh/Schmidt (New Girl)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	soften every edge

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly can't believe that i haven't posted a schmece fic on here before now, seeing as they're probably my favorite ship of all time. anyway, this is a little messy but i love them so much so i had to post a lil something. 
> 
> (title from 'light' by sleeping at last. the song itself doesnt rly fit this fic but i liked this line plus the song is on my schmece playlist so yeah)

When Cece wakes up, she’s no longer holding hands with Schmidt. Instead, she’s lying on her side, and he’s lying on his stomach, with an arm thrown over her. She wiggles out of his grasp to reach for her phone. 

She clicks it on. It’s 6am. She scrolls through her Instagram feed, but she can’t stop thinking about the man beside her. 

  


The thing is, Cece’s never really liked sleeping alone. When she was a young girl and had nightmares, she’d go running to her parents room. They’d calm her down, but then they’d send her back to her own room to go to sleep. She’d always want to stay in their room longer, to sandwich herself between them and get cozy and warm under their blankets, but they’d tell her to go back to her own bed. When she’d inevitably go back to her room, she’d lie awake in bed for hours sometimes, feeling the fear from the nightmare lingering around her.

As she grew up, she still hated to sleep alone, but there was less and less she could do about it. She couldn’t even lie next to her mother for too long without her mother making her move. She was too old to receive parental affection. So she slept alone in her bed, moonlight streaming in, turning restlessly. She always loved sleepovers, because then she could sleep next to people and it was okay, even encouraged. Even if she was the last one to fall asleep, she’d know she wasn’t alone.

In the past few years, she’s gotten really good at finding ways not to be alone when she falls asleep. When she lived with Jess, she’d put on girly movie marathons and they’d fall asleep together on the couch. And often, if she and her model friends get drunk enough, they’ll pass out in bed together. It’s a great way not to be alone, and even better, it occurs “naturally.” Cece doesn’t have to ask someone to crawl into bed with her if they just happen to accidentally fall asleep in the same place.

  


Maybe that’s why she tends to constantly date shitty men. It’s a great way to get someone in her bed. Realistically, if she wants to never sleep alone, she should get into a serious, long-term relationship. The kind that involves moving in and sharing a bed. But that would require her to admit vulnerability, to openly ask someone to share her life with her. No, she’ll just stick to the DJs and business school dropouts, the sorts of men who she has tons of reasons to leave quickly whenever things get Too Much.

Look, it’s not that Cece has a problem with vulnerability _per se_. She’s amazing at helping Jess work through all of her problems, including the sticky relationship ones. And she’s helped many a fellow model mend a broken heart. But when it comes to _her_ vulnerability, well, Cece would rather just not. 

So when Schmidt comes into the room, and asks to sleep beside her, and admits that he doesn’t like to sleep alone, she can’t help but confess that she too hates sleeping alone. And she can’t help but grasp his hand. Because he just said it. Just admitted to her, clear as day, that he hates sleeping alone. It tells her that he’s got some sort of personhood buried beneath the toned abs and terrible one-liners. There’s a _realness_ to him, this guy she’s hardly met, a strange sort of unguardedness that he shows her after only knowing her a couple of weeks.

  


When she wakes up in the morning, she feels a little weird about it. Remembering the way she just… held this guy’s hand for no real reason makes her feel a little queasy. So she slips out of bed and makes herself some coffee. She grabs a cup of the Greek yogurt that Jess keeps in this fridge specifically for her, and pours in granola and chia seeds. A gritty breakfast, but mostly well balanced.

She sips the coffee and stirs the granola into the yogurt and tries her best to not freak out about last night. 

Jess is the next one up, and they chat away in the kitchen. Cece’s mostly able to put away that moment of softness, that pang in the pit of her stomach that said _hey, me too_ , she’s almost forgotten about it.

And Nick and Winston join them in the kitchen, and then all of a sudden Winston’s putting cereal into Nick’s hair, because of course he is, this is what life is like here, isn’t it?

  


Schmidt comes out of his room last. He makes himself an omelet, constantly turning to make cracks at Nick and Winston. He pours in what can only be described as an insane amount of red pepper into his egg. She can’t help it if she looks at him a little too long then, if the simple act of him liking his omelets spicy makes her like him a little more.

He meets her gaze, and smiles. There’s a warmth in his eyes that’s unfamiliar. She’s only known him a few weeks, but in that time he’s been brazen and direct, focusing on her body more than anything else about her. But, now, here he is. Smiling at her in a different sort of way.

God, it’s not like she’s about to fall in love or anything. God forbid. She’s much too good to fall in _love_ with this dumbass fratboy type. But as she looks at him from across the room she feels that he _gets_ her. In a strange, scary way, in a way that reaches to parts of her she always shies away from sharing.

  


At face value, she hates him, she really does. He’s too direct and objectifying, too douchey, too full of himself. But, then, maybe there’s something more. Maybe, despite all of that terribleness, he shares something with her that surprasses all his stupid comments and long looks. 

She’s not planning to do anything about it. He’s just Jess’s douchey roommate, and Cece will keep him at a distance. But no matter how hard she tries, she’ll always have a little bit of a soft spot for this toned asshole. Because, as contradictory as it seems, appearing in complete odds to his personality, he’s got a bit of the core loneliness that she never admits is a part of her. No matter what, this little connection will always be something they share.

**Author's Note:**

> ok just gotta plug 'Not Yet Known (The Inconvenient Soulmates Remix)' by blithers. please please read it if you haven't already. it's my fave schmece fic ever and it inspired me to write this. some elements of this fic are borrowed from there (though not intentionally - i just love it so much that it sometimes gets mixed up w canon in my head) so credit to blithers for a couple aspects of this. anyway just please read that fic it's so amazing.
> 
> ok that's all thank u for reading my fic!


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